Saturday, May 26, 2012

Memorial Day 2012

This weekend we celebrate Memorial Day.  Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day, because it was a time when people would decorate the graves of those soldiers who has fallen in war to honor and remember them.

In many of the national cemeteries, they still mark all the graves with a flag for this weekend.  This makes me feel good, since my baby brother is buried in one of those cemeteries.

I always think of the poem "In Flanders Fields" on Memorial Day because I had to learn it in school and never forgot.  The poem has an interesting history.

In 1915, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrea who a poem called "In Flanders Fields" while presiding over the funeral of a fellow fallen soldier who was killed in the Second Battle of Ypres in Belgium and buried in Flanders Fields, a field were red poppies grew everywhere.  McCrea was not very happy with the poem he wrote and threw it away, but one of his fellow officers saved it.  It was published in Punch on December 8, 1915.

In What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown? which was broadcast for Memorial Day in 1983, Linus recites "In Flanders Fields" while the Peanuts gang is visiting the cemetery there:


So, if you see a vet selling poppies this weekend, and you decide to buy one, remember that the money goes towards helping needy veterans.  Oh, and by the way, they are mady by vet themselves, and although they receive a small amount of money for making poppies, so many it is their only source of income.

All this being said, have a happy, healthy and safe Memorial Day and have some fun, too.

9 comments:

  1. Thank you for this post, Alex. One of my memories is of driving through the fields of Normandy looking for the grave of my mother's youngest brother who died there, eighteen years old in Le Quesny in the last months of the First World War. We eventually found it one of the many British graveyards, small gray stones each with flowers growingin front of them, next door to the huge German graveyards, stark black crosses on green grass. There these young men of two nations lay, side by side. My uncle's stone had his name on it. The saddest were the stones with no name, and only the words "Known only to God."

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    1. Sometimes I think people forget the reason for Memorial Day but I think that your story is one of the very important reasons to remember it. Maybe if we pay more attention to the real purpose of the day, we will not be so willing to be at war again.

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  2. Thanks! I hadn't seen Linus reciting "In Flanders Fields" -- it was a touching beginning to Memorial Day weekend.

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    1. Joy, I also thought it was a touching way to remember Memorial Day and Linus always does such a good job at reciting important things.

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  3. I think it's a disgrace how we mark Memorial Day in these United States. Thank you for the wonderful post, I've never heard this poem before.

    http://www.ManOfLaBook.com

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    1. Zohar, I know what you mean, although there are veterans parades all over the country still, I think, unless budget cuts have ended that, too. As I said I learned this poem in school, along with O Captain, My Captain about Lincoln's death. Apparently I had a very patriotic English teacher one year.

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  4. My granddad was killed in 1916. I have the ‘death plaque’ the government gave my grandma at the time. It just has his name and the year he died. His name is also on a remembrance wall somewhere in Belgium, but his body was never found. “In Flanders Field” has great meaning for me, so I was worried about the Charlie Brown video – but in fact, it’s beautifully done.

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  5. Barbara, I can understand your concerns about the Charlie Brown video, but I also thought it was well done and rather meaningful. This Memorial Day here in the US seems to be more focused on the real meaning of the day and not on the "unofficial beginning of summer" as it has been called so often.

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  6. What a beautiful post! My students read a book called In Flanders Field- it is a book that included history and the poem. It is lengthy, but we have some great discussions based off of it. I have never seen Linus reciting the poem- so that was nice. It is important to remember those that have served.

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